wp_list_categories depth and number

Question

My code is as follows:

$custom_args = array(
     'orderby'          => 'name',
     'order'            => 'ASC',   
     'depth'            => 1,
     'number'           => 4, 
);
    wp_list_categories($custom_args);

I'd like to create a list of categories and to show only the parent category, I use 'depth' => 1, but because I also want to control the number of categories, I added 'number' => 4 hoping that would be enough however it only shows one parent category.

If I remove depth it shows the 4 categories but the links are also children categories.

Any idea on how to solve this issue I'm having? Many thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Structure is as follows:

<ul class="main-menu">  
    <li><a href="">CMS Themes</a>
        <ul class="children">
            <li><a href="">Moodle</a></li>
        </ul>
    </li>
    <li><a href="">Empty Cat</a></li>
    <li><a href="">HTML</a>
        <ul class="children">
            <li><a href="">Creative</a></li>
        </ul>
    </li>
    <li><a href="">Photography</a></li>
    <li><a href="">Wordpress</a>
        <ul class="children">
            <li><a href="">Blog / Magazine</a></li>
            <li><a href="">Corporate</a></li>
            <li><a href="">Creative</a></li>
            <li><a href="">eCommerce</a></li>
            </li>
        </ul>
    </li>
</ul>